


Ellipsis

by 264feet



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Backstory, Chrom's Father, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, rape mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 08:40:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3563294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/264feet/pseuds/264feet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ellipsis is a device used in narratives to omit something better left unsaid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ellipsis

He was that quiet presence in the back of the funeral. The one who could manage words of respect for every Plegian felled. The one who worried that he only was dropping by the foot soldiers' quarters and getting to know them in order to be able to word their obituaries.

_"Sir?" someone was saying._

But stronger words roared in his mind, over the rally of a nation.  
Mustafa supposed King Gangrel was what the people needed. Someone with a loud presence, unlike himself; someone who would restore faith that the Ylisseans would never leave the corpses hanging at the gallows until 'brigands' cut them down in the night. 

Cut them down quietly as the Ylisseans slit throats.  
Quietly as he himself slit throats.

...

_"You're not answering me-- with all due respect, sir--"_

He was that solace after physical exertion, when his feelings had been channeled out through him as energy and sweat, his attempt at tears.  
Mustafa had decided to start building up his muscle after he cut his father down from the gallows, but couldn't lift the man's body.

Not that he had stopped trying.

...

(... even in death, his father looked beyond him, as if to remind Mustafa that his mother was calling, that he should appreciate her too while he still had her and...)

...

_"... a message, sir, fr-from King Gangrel, sir."_

Ylisse and Plegia had different means of keeping people alive.

When a man or woman of the current army of Plegia died, Mustafa kept their name close in his mind. He wouldn't think 'apple', he'd think 'Lyel's favorite'-- just the way he gave peaches to Henry, who was so similar to his son. He did it so he felt like he could honor his men while they were still breathing.

(So he could see the people he was protecting, something beyond steam from the hot water of the baths and blood down the drain after pulling the plug...)

When a man or woman of the past citizens of Plegia had died, after execution by arrow or rope or sword, the last Exalt- the Slaughterer- had let the body rot for days at a time. Until the survivors and their families would evacuate the area themselves, from the stench, so he could claim generosity for sparing their lives.

And when a Ylissean died, Mustafa ordered them to be buried anywhere but the battlefield in which they were felled-- so it didn't claim their soul and their body too, he would think.

Though it did happen less and less frequently. The whispers were that Prince Chrom championed 'bonds' the way the Slaughterer championed 'generosity'.

Mustafa's father had been hanged in Ylisse, not the battlefield where he was defeated. So he took other souls and bodies with him.

...

Oh, but they wouldn't just let a great Plegian General die, that was too easy. Too easy.

Mustafa's father hadn't been hanged in the ruins of a conquered town, nor the silence of a ruined battlefield. It had been in the capital of Ylisse--

(... so the body could fertilize the beautiful greenery  
so the Ylisseans could see beauty from even massacre)

 ...

Mustafa's father's answer to every interrogation, whether at the end of a cattle prod or a sword, it had been--

_Please spare my men_

And Mustafa awoke to hear that more than once. Just a daydream, whether an hour in the light of the moon or a second in the glimmer of an enemy blade. This time, a soldier--

_Lerban, brother of Rosso, son of Turlor, father-to-be of--_

**\--** had to deliver a message, but found the General unresponsive. Mustafa shook his head slightly.

"Aye, lad. I'm fine. Deliver your message."

"A-are you sure, sir? I can have an Elixir here in minutes, and--"

"Let it be saved. There were over a hundred wounded in yesterday's battle alone."

"... Yes, sir." And he delivered his message.

Mustafa listened.  
The best he could, anyway.  
In Plegia, there was no post-traumatic stress. The only diagnosis was cowardice, and there was a cure. It was once called generosity.

* * *

He was the calm of an unmarred battlefield, which he always aspired to leave less green than when his soldiers entered.

The King gave special treatment to his Generals. Like awarding dogs treats for good behavior. Which was, of course, defined by the King.

...

Their rations were imported goods from Valm, Regna Ferox...

Mustafa often had eaten in the barracks with his men instead.

...

He had skipped eating that day in particular, because King Gangrel left the Exalt's corpse to rot, the way the Slaughterer did.

* * *

Rain sliced like needles, falling on every man equally, Ylissean or Plegian.

Prince Chrom's eyes burned through the grey. Only the young warriors had that intensity, ones who let their words out rather than bottling them up and letting them pass like a last breath.

Mustafa was just a weapon. Weapons didn't feel. Only the people at either end of the blade did. 

The Slaughterer or the slaughtered.

...

It must have been the rain. That's how Mustafa couldn't tell if Chrom had the intensity of a young soldier or the wickedness the Slaughterer had.

Then again, Mustafa thought, Prince Chrom took to the battlefield in the first place, whilst his father just stayed hidden away in his castle...

Then again, Mustafa thought, taking to the battlefield is a faster way to kill Plegians than capturing and hanging them...

Then again...

Again...

Breathe.

 _"He's just full of hate," whispered King Gangrel, in his ear, "he just wants revenge. The rest are flowery words, like his blasted Father gave."_  

... 

Mustafa thought.

Within the past hours, he had realized the only person of whom he couldn't say anything post-mortem was Emmeryn.

"Don't speak her name!" demanded Chrom, the first time he tried. 

Sharp. Different words erupted in Mustafa's mind, shrapnel from an Exalt so impossible to defy that nobody would even dare call him a 'Mad King'. Mustafa focused on the rain, the white noise, to pull himself back to reality; this wasn't just his life on the line, there were Plegian lives--

 _and their wives and husbands and children--_ and then Mustafa was just four feet tall again, and the soldiers of the Halidom were raping the women of their village. Creating more horrors that couldn't be said, beyond all the Slaughterer's censorship. Because some things were just too awful to say. 

... ...

Deep breaths.

"Your rage is justified, Prince Chrom," said the calm of the unmarred battlefield. That rain poured down the bones of their armor, the ones they saved during the Plegian famines because there was no such thing as _too_ resourceful-- and the only line they would draw was they would never eat the corpses of the men and women killed by Ylisse.

And so on.

...

His words were grand for his men. Mustafa hesitated to swat a fly rather than capture it in his calloused hands-- and he said he would give a swift end to a Prince. But the people of Plegia needed something to believe in, even if it was hate or pain. So he gave up all his hate and pain and loaned it out to the others, so long as it kept them breathing. He could stand just being a weapon.

Mustafa only thought a few words of Emmeryn, then. She had a people's beliefs within her, too. She felt a thousand eyes on her, atop the hateful stares of the Plegians, atop the Mad King's grimace.

Just like Mustafa felt the eyes of his men on his back.  
And his father's eyes.  
After the boy couldn't drag his father to safety, he at least closed his eyes, so he wouldn't have to witness any more--

...

A nation wasn't a flag, nor a King, an Exalt. It was the bonds and collective breath that put bread on the tables and swords in their hilts.

"I see a cause worth fighting for," a soldier was saying, "one I believe in: loyalty to my general."

 _Interesting,_ would think Mustafa. _I fight for loyalty to you all as well._

* * *

"I know him well," would say Mustafa, later-- whether a minute or a decade, it was meaningless. King Gangrel's words rang in his head at any hour of the day. "He would murder my wife and child to set an example."

...

Back then, the hardest part to overcome had been the pleading, which gave the illusion that the Plegians being hanged were human. So those to be executed were beaten until death's embrace was a relief, not a punishment.

They couldn't do that for the to-be-executed's children. Generosity.

The children were the ones who cut the nooses down in the night. Those were their fathers. Those were their mothers. Those were all the eyes below the ground Emmeryn would collide into, an unstoppable force with an immovable object.

...

None of that was his to ponder. He was as much a weapon for Plegia as the swords and bows were. Mustafa felt more like he was helping his wife and child on the battlefield than at home. No matter what their pleading had said.

... ...

* * *

Mustafa had lived as a soldier. He didn't flinch when the Falchion bit through his chest. He died the same as his soldiers had. He had lived the same as his soldiers had.

Chrom was crying. The rain didn't disguise that. Just like, when training and training and training to drown the hurt, Mustafa's sweat didn't disguise it, either.

* * *

So there had been no hate in those eyes.

So Mustafa and his men died together, not alone, like would say Gangrel, with his own last breath from the same sword.

...

* * *

"Sire, the remaining Plegian forces are surrendering en masse!"

"Order our forces to cease fighting at once."

...

Ylisse had taken little from the again-fallen nation, to prove the new Prince was better than the Slaughterer.

It was simple.

Regna Ferox took reparations, and reparations only;  
Chrom took back Emmeryn... and genuine flowers sprouted from her grave, ones that didn't soon wilt like those hanged by the Slaughterer eventually did;  
Henry took peaches to plant trees.

...

It was disrespectful. Prince Chrom held ceremonies for all the fallen men, ones he could address by name, Shepherds or not. Henry 'played in the dirt', as they said.

Henry responded to every interrogation with:

"They're gone. Now what?"

Even the questions such as, "are you okay?"

...

(sometimes he told himself the fact that peach pits all had small amounts of cyanide, and they grew into such big beautiful trees anyway...)

* * *

Chrom was the smile he put on for his people, at the royal wedding, and at his eventual coronation.

He put becoming the Exalt off until it could be a real smile, until he could visit Emm's grave and feel like he had watered the growing flowers more with water from the can and less with tears from his heart.

* * *

In several years, those peach trees grew big and tall. They grew naturally. The ground built atop itself, with more layers of grass and less layers of upturned soil and embalming fluid. Souls rested. Multiple with Mustafa's, who remembered all the other names which had no families to remember them.

And later, a son spent time visiting each soldier's grave, finally stopping at Mustafa's-- at his father's.

The Ylisseans wouldn't understand why such an ordinary-looking boy would, on his grand vacation, ask to see the graveyard.

... ...

The story doesn't truly end. As there will always be rain, and there will always be war, equally on all people.

An ellipsis is a device used in narratives to omit something better left unsaid. The soldiers had heard war as nothing but shouts of men and clashes of weapons. Mustafa had heard all sorts of ellipses.

They were in the second before life flickered out of a body, before the corpse felt lighter in his arms; in the moments right after a hanging, when nobody was sure if it was proper yet to leave; in the chest-heaving seconds after the soldiers caught their breath from a laughing fit because old Lerban fell in the mud.

Stories don't truly end. There only have been times when the storyteller was unable to continue, because he was felled in battle or was taken by the Slaughterer. The greatest ellipses.

Mustafa caught all of those, like nightmares in a dreamcatcher. Until Falchion cut it open. Until he could live up to his father, and let his final words be:

_Please spare my men_

...


End file.
